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"In addition to being poor at detecting gross defects and almost useless for detecting fraud, [peer review] is slow, expensive, profligate of academic time, highly subjective, something of a lottery, prone to bias and easily abused."

"In addition to being poor at detecting gross defects and almost useless for detecting fraud, [peer review] is slow, expensive, profligate of academic time, highly subjective, something of a lottery, prone to bias and easily abused."

"Moral standards" are a lot like lighthouses: they exist to help us stay on course as we sail through life. But we have to steer BY them, but not directly AT them. Lest we end up marooned on the shoals of perpetual self-righteousness.

I'm not the one who implied that peer review and repeatability were the same thing and then slunk away from that idea when it was pointed out how stupid it was.

You are the only one who made such a stupid implication.

I'm not the guy who said an experiment was "likely" to be repeated if the paper was peer reviewed. That's an assertion that shows you have no experience with the process of either.

There is no assertion there at all. But if you make a claim such as there is a large body of supercritical water under the crust of the Earth, you can bet people are going to independently investigate that claim. If you claim to have an apparatus that can accomplish cold fusion, you can bet people are going to try and reproduce that apparatus to verify your claim.

The process varies by discipline of course.

Galatians 5:22-23 (New International Version)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

"Moral standards" are a lot like lighthouses: they exist to help us stay on course as we sail through life. But we have to steer BY them, but not directly AT them. Lest we end up marooned on the shoals of perpetual self-righteousness.

"Moral standards" are a lot like lighthouses: they exist to help us stay on course as we sail through life. But we have to steer BY them, but not directly AT them. Lest we end up marooned on the shoals of perpetual self-righteousness.

It's pretty simple Arthur. Journals are private enterprises that cater to a specific audience. An atheist should not expect to get published in peer reviewed Christian journals... Nor does a Christian expect to get published in secular journals if they attack the the ruling paradigm / belief system of the subscribers.

This isn't about Christianity or atheism, it's about science. The reason why an old earth/evolution is accepted around the world is because the evidence supports it and as with any theory in science it was and is subject to scrutiny aka peer review. Kent Hovind has even been criticized by AIG and creationists for his outlandish views so his criticizing the peer review system is a joke in itself.

Scientists usually present data and their analysis of that data. If they did any experiments to confirm their hypothesis then then they include the experiment details and the results. If they have any starting assumptions, those are clearly laid out and discussed. If the starting assumptions are wrong, then the rest of experiment is meaningless. Many of the "creation scientists" I have read start with a large number of assertions that are either not supported or are flat out wrong when compared to what is actually known through previous scientific investigation.

That is the other advantage of peer reviewed journals. People can see what has been done and then they can continue to build on the work of others. If you are going to offer a paper that completely throws out most or all of the work done be previous generations of scientists then you had better have irrefutable new evidence and experiments to support your paper.

Galatians 5:22-23 (New International Version)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

"Moral standards" are a lot like lighthouses: they exist to help us stay on course as we sail through life. But we have to steer BY them, but not directly AT them. Lest we end up marooned on the shoals of perpetual self-righteousness.

This is about our beliefs about the past, and about our history. Everyone uses the exact same data and scientific method. Science has very little to do with it. We can't do repeatable experiments on a one-time event in the past. We can do repeatable experiments with things in the present (dating methods, genetic variation, measure distance etc) and make conclusions about our history

Originally Posted by Arthur Brain

...so his criticizing the peer review system is a joke in itself.

I don't know of any scientist who doesn't recognize the flaws in the peer review process.

This is about our beliefs about the past, and about our history. Everyone uses the exact same data and scientific method. Science has very little to do with it. We can't do repeatable experiments on a one-time event in the past. We can do repeatable experiments with things in the present (dating methods, genetic variation, measure distance etc) and make conclusions about our history.

We can look at events from the past based on the evidence that those events leave behind. We can compare the evidence to other known events and compare the results to see if they are consistent. Sadly, not everyone uses the exact same data or scientific method. Some contrive data and other use a method to get to a preconceived result. That is what peer review is good for, it finds the people who are frauds. Look at what happened to Dr. Andrew Wakefield.

Galatians 5:22-23 (New International Version)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

"Moral standards" are a lot like lighthouses: they exist to help us stay on course as we sail through life. But we have to steer BY them, but not directly AT them. Lest we end up marooned on the shoals of perpetual self-righteousness.